The menu intrigued us, but the food is only so-so. The kitchen has a very heavy hand on sauces, drowning the food and most the flavor.
For example, the Thai beef salad. The beef tasted good. But the lettuce was drowning in sauce. On top of the beef salad, a heap of fried crunchy strips that you find on Chinese Chicken Salad. Below, there's even more fried crunchy strips SOAKED is sauce. We ordered this because they don't have many green vegetables on their tapas list.
"vegetables and lentils" =' carrots and celery.
The boquerones that come with roasted red pepper and yellow pepper "vin" is also overpowering. There's also dotted aioli on the plate. You can't taste the fish which makes you wonder if the chef and staff hate boquerones as it's total disrespect for the ingredient.
The chorizo clams is more like a chili with so much cumin and chili oil, it's diarrhea in a bowl. I could totally see Anthony Bourdain doing a schtick about this dish on No Reservations.
The roasted tomato basil soup was plain and comforting. Especially in light of the heavy sauces overpowering the palate.
Albondigas pretty tasty.
But the service. It ain't Picasso even though there's faux Picassos hanging. And service doesn't even come close to the strip. Unprofessional and uneven. Bus boys work pretty hard, and ours was no exception. Our waiter, however, was more interested in flirting with single women patrons and other staff. We had to ask two people to get our waiter as he left us hanging with appetizers (3!) and no wine. He still didn't come. Uh hello, people want wine WITH their meal. We even made that clear when we sat down. We just needed a moment to go through the wine list.
It's also obvious when there's all this SAUCE left over and separation of food from the sauce that something is wrong with the dishes. The waiter chose to remain oblivious.
Happy Hour from 3-6.